BRAIN
AND LANGUAGE
43,682-693
(1992)
Why Are Kana Words Named Faster Than Kanji Words? JUN YAMADA
Feldman and Turvey (1980) found that colors conventionally written in kanji (a logographic script) are named slower than are the unconventional kana (a syllabic script) transcriptions of the kanji color words. This surprising finding was attributed to the closer relation of kana to phonology, which is consonant with the general dual-route theory. However, the present study has shown that kanji numerals are namedfaster than are the corresponding kana numerals. A hypothesis involving selection difficulty inherent in most kanji is presented to explain those apparently conflicting results. Some implications for further research on the kanji versus kana issue are also discussed. 0 1992 Academic Press. Inc.
Which do native speakersof Japanesename faster, kana (a syllabic script) or kanji (a logographic script)? It has seemedthat naming latencies are shorter for words written in kana than for the samewords written in kanji. This surprising result was first made by Feldman and Turvey (1980). These investigators showed that six color words in kana are named faster than are the samecolor words in kanji. This finding was impressive becausecolor words are normally written in kanji rather than in kana. Feldman and Turvey reasonedthat the superiority of kana over kanji is attributed to the closer relation of kana to phonology, which is consonantwith the general dual-route hypothesis which statesthat kanji processinggoesdirectly to meaning and then to sound, whereaskana processing goes to meaning via sound. (However, see Besner and Hildebrandt, 1987, and Yamada, Imai, and Ikebe, 1990, for the dual-route issue for kana.) The kana superiority effect has also been observed for other words. Thus, Nomura (198 l), Goryo (1987), and others have found that kana transcriptions of common kanji words such as lb (/yama/ meaning “hill”) and % (/doku/meaning “poison”) alsotake lesslatency to name than do the common kanji words. Despite these findings, however, research involving the theory of dual-route for kanji and kana is not without problems. Among others, failure to control two I am indebted to Professor Danny Steinberg, Surugadai University, who provided and suggested important improvements in the manuscript. Address correspondence quests to Professor Jun Yamada, Faculty of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Hiroshima 89, Higashi-Senda, Naka-Ku, Hiroshima 730, Japan. 682 0093-934x/92
$5.00
Copyri@~t 0 1992 by Academic F’ress, Inc. All rights of repnxluction in any form reserved.
valuable advice and reprint reUniversity, l-l-
NAMING
WORDS
IN KANJI
AND KANA
683
essential variables concerning familiarity of the kanji and kana scripts is the most serious. Two hypotheses may be put forth concerning these important variables. One may be called the word-constituent familiarity hypothesis. It is certainly true that @, for example, is a form more familiar to adult Japanese than is its corresponding 2 ( . But it is also true that each constituent kana form tf and ( is much more familiar than the form 8. The empirical question therefore should be as to which is named faster, two more-familiar items combined (i.e., two-character kana) or a single less-familiar item (i.e., one-character kanji), rather than a low-frequency kana word or a high-frequency kanji word. Then the results reported in the previous literature could be taken as suggesting that a string of two more-familiar items (i.e., a kana word) is named faster than is a single less-familiar item (i.e., a kanji word). The other problem may be called the selection difficulty hypothesis. The retrieval of kanji seems to be greatly influenced by how they are stored in longterm memory. While most individual kanji represent both free and bound morphemes (e.g., h /hito/ meaning “person” as a free morpheme, and h Q /hitobito/ meaning “people,” h 88 /ningen/ meaning “human being,” and El * h /nipponjin/ meaning “Japanese,” as bound morphemes), bound morphemes appear far more frequently in familiar forms than as free morphemes (cf. Hayashi, 1982). Thus, when A, for example, is presented as a stimulus item or a cue, A, as a bound morpheme embedded in A b , A 88, and/or El * A rather than as simply A, a free morpheme, may be retrieved. If this is the case, the reading of an individual kanji appropriate to the cue must be selected from among the word(s) retrieved, thus requiring some additional time to name depending on how difficult such a selection is. This hypothesis is an extension of Clark and Clark’s (1977) view of naming objects. Note that this hypothesis does not necessarily assume that the processing of kanji goes directly to meaning from print. Also note that selection difficulty may be experienced even if a kanji has only one reading, provided that it is firmly embedded in a word. In light of this line of reasoning, the findings reported by Feldman and Turvey (1980) and others are interpreted as reflecting this selection difficulty effect inherent in most kanji. Highlighting these basic aspects of familiarity in the present study, we can compare three hypotheses, the dual-route, word-constituent familiarity, and selection difficulty hypotheses, each of which would make a different prediction. The question in point is whether unconventional kana words are always named faster than are the corresponding conventional kanji words. Specifically, two questions may be addressed. First, what happens if the familiarity of single kanji, which may function more frequently as bound morphemes than as free morphemes, is roughly comparable to that of single kana? Second, what happens if the familiarity of single kanji, which may function more frequently as free morphemes than as bound morphemes, is roughly comparable to that of single kana? Are such kanji words, if any, still named slower than are the kana transcriptions? As a matter of fact, such kanji are found in the first part of a Japanese
684
JUN YAMADA
primer for first graders, in which a few of the most familiar kanji words are introduced along with all types of kana. These basic kanji are among the high-frequency kanji in adult literature as well. Examples include numerals such as 3 (/san/ meaning “three”) and h (/go/ meaning “five”) and common nouns such as * (/ki/ meaning “tree”) and Cl (/kuchi/ meaning “mouth”). Furthermore, if the age of acquisition of graphemes as well as words is a good index of familiarity (cf. Carroll and White, 1973), those individual kana and basic kanji could be more or less comparable in terms of familiarity, being acquired at almost the same earliest stage of literacy. They could have resided in long-term memory for the longest period of time. Feldman and Turvey’s (1980) dual-route hypothesis would predict that even very familiar kanji words, whether they are frequently used as free morphemes or not, are named slower than are the kana transcriptions. By contrast, the wordconstituent familiarity hypothesis would claim that if familiarity, regardless of the context in which kanji appear, is the single best predictor of retrieval speed, then no significant difference between familiar kanji words and familiar kana strings, or even a kanji superiority effect, would be observed if a single kanji is as familiar as each of the component kana in the kana transcription. (A kanji in general corresponds to two kana.) On the other hand, if the selection difficulty hypothesis is correct, it would suggest that the selection difficulty of familiar kanji normally used as free morphemes would be negligible so that those kanji are named as fast as or even faster than are the corresponding kana transcriptions, with the result that free morpheme kanji are named faster than bound morpheme kanji. Regarding kana, the hypothesis would predict that since each kana is stored associated with a specific mora (or syllable) independently of other kana-mora correspondences in long-term memory, no selection difficulty would occur in the naming task. In addition to the comparison of these hypotheses, it is of interest to evaluate the validity of each route of the dual-route hypothesis from somewhat different angles. Concerning the print to sound route, Danny Steinberg (1991, personal communication) has suggested that the pyschological reality of the print-tosound-to-meaning route for kana may be examined by comparing naming times of words and nonwords written in kana. Nonwords could only be pronounced by recourse to kana-sound correspondences. Thus if they are named as fast as words in kana, that would suggest that the kana-to-sound route is psychologically plausible. Recently, however, Besner and Hildebrandt (1987) have found a reaction time advantage of orthographically unfamiliar katakana words over katakana nonwords, thus arguing for lexical access of words in kana achieved without reference to phonology, i.e., direct access to meaning. While katakana are used mainly to represent foreign loan words, hiragana are used to represent function words and some content words. Whether or not the same results would be obtained for hiragana is an empirical question. Thus a comparison of naming words and nonwords in hiragana was also included in this study. With regard to the direct semantic route for kanji, it may be possible to com-
NAMING
WORDS
IN KANJI
AND
KANA
685
pare naming times of meaningless kanji and kana. One possible set of meaningless kanji involves kanji constituents appearing in personal names. The dualroute hypothesis would expect that such constituent kanji, if randomly ordered, would be named as fast as the corresponding kana. But the selection difficulty hypothesis would predict that the former would be named slower than the latter because the constituents are so firmly embedded in the name that segmenting it and selecting the right constituent would be difficult. This issue was also addressed in this study. METHOD Subjects The subjects male. All were of the subjects word sets, and
were 12 Hiroshima University undergraduates, 21 to 22 years old, 11 females and 1 considered good readers of Japanese, none having a history of a speech problem. Six were assigned numeral and common noun sets, 2 were assigned kana word and non4 were assigned personal name sets.
Stimuli Numerals as free morphemes and common nouns as bound morphemes. Two sets of words were selected from a Japanese primer for first graders which was authorized by the Ministry of Education. One set consisted of 10 kanji numerals and their kana transcriptions, and the other set consisted of 9 high-frequency common nouns and their kana transcriptions. The kanji words were conventional while their kana transcriptions unconventional. Table 1 shows the test stimuli. According to Hayashi (1982). these kanji numerals range in frequency rank (based on counts of newspapers) from the 2nd to the 57th highest; and 5 common nouns of 9 ranging from the 6th to the 73rd highest (for the remaining 4 nouns, frequency data are not available). Thus the mean frequency was somewhat higher for the numeral set than for the common noun set. Numerals are basically regarded as free morphemes even though in some cases they may be used as bound morphemes. Take 3 A (Isan-nin/ meaning “three people”) for example. The numeral 3 (a free morpheme) and the following h (a bound morpheme) combine to form a quasi-word which is neither a word nor a compound word. It is simply not a word, and no dictionary has an entry for it. Nor is it a compound word, because h (/nin/ in this case) is not a word but a bound morpheme. Because it is a free morpheme, 3 in 3 h is salient and easy to isolate and select. In contrast, the common nouns in Table 1 function as both free and bound morphemes. Although no frequency counts of free and bound morphemes are readily available, the data in Hayashi (1982) strongly suggest that those kanji are used much more frequently as bound morphemes than as free morphemes; such data are in good agreement with the intuition of adult Japanese. (It should be noted, however, that those common nouns first appear as free morphemes in Japanese primers for first graders.) Thus if selecting the target bound morpheme kanji embedded in a word is really difficult, those kanji common nouns would take longer to name than kanji numerals. Twenty-two numeral lists (11 kanji and 11 kana lists), each composed of 12 numeral items, and 22 common noun lists (11 kanji and 11 kana lists), each composed of 9 words, respectively, were formed from each word set. The words in each list were randomly ordered, but the orders in 2 lists of 11 were the same for the kanji and kana versions. Each list of words was typed horizontally on a strip, so that a total of 44 lists (4 practice lists and 40 test lists) was produced. Words and nonwords in kana. Nine nonwords were constructed by arranging the constituent kana used in the common noun set (Table 1). Eight of these nonwords had the same initial kana as the words. Employing a similar procedure to that employed for the common noun set, 11 nonword lists (1 practice list and 10 test lists) were made, and these were used along with the common noun lists. Kanji and kana in personal names. Two personal names each composed of 5 kanji were chosen
686
JUN YAMADA TABLE 1 TESTSTIMULIFORTHENAMINGTASKS
Numerals Kanji Kana Reading Meaning
o-:=pje4 ei3 zero 0
c\%J ichi 1
IZ ni 2
Common nouns Kanji LLlk Kana 91 Reading yama Meaning hill
3% ue “P
7; Lt-, shita bottom
Nonwords Kana Reading
52 “to
LX shie
Personal names MU. Kanji Kana Reading Y.O. Kanji Kma Reading
972 YaQ & 385 Ume k &k’lj’ 00
ik bt-, kita
8% S.Ul 3
&A4 yen 4
z go 5
A 3( roku 6
+I t. iii nana 7
/l
h
ra%J hachi 8
SIP3 ky” 9
JII
q
*
Ik
k
A
i~h kawa river
(% kuchi mouth
$ ki tree
9% tsuchi mud
73 hi tire
02 hito person
%fP chika
< ku
q
% ;4 Mi &J
g 5 chi s
$”
k ta
NJ Yu
a mi
L ko
3% kima
90 tsuhi
u hi
Oh hiwa
R k
(Table 1). Each constituent kanji and their corresponding kana forms were then randomly ordered to form 11 kanji lists and 11 kana lists. Each list consisted of 9 items with some items appearing twice.
Procedure Six subjects assigned the numeral and common noun sets read aloud 2 practice numeral lists and 20 test numeral lists (10 kanji and 10 kana lists) in a session, and 2 practice common noun lists and 20 test common noun lists (10 kanji and 10 kana lists) in another session. The subject was asked to read each of the items on the list out loud as quickly but as accurately as possible. Three of the subjects started with the numeral lists, alternating the kanji and kana lists in that order, whereas the remaining three subjects started with the common noun lists, alternating the kana and kanji lists in that order. That is, 1 practice trial and 10 trials were given to each subject, each trial consisting of reading of a pair of 1 kanji and 1 kana list. Short breaks were given between trials when a subject wanted to have one. Two subjects assigned the kana word and nonword sets read aloud 2 practice lists (1 kana word list and 1 nonword list) and 20 test lists (10 word and 10 nonword lists). They were thus given 1 practice trial and 10 test trials. On each trial, they read aloud a pair of kana word and nonword lists. Two pairs of subjects participated in the personal name task, one pair with M.U. and her friend, and the other with Y.O. and her friend (Table 1). The M.U. pair was given the M.U. lists consisting of M.U.‘s kanji and kana, and the Y.O. pair, the Y.O. lists consisting Y.O.‘s kanji and kana. The procedure was the same as that for the other subjects for the other tasks. The subjects’ readings of the lists were all tape-recorded in a quiet room. Time durations for reading the lists were measured by means of an oscillograph in the order of 9 msec and when necessary a soundspectrograph in the order of 4 msec (Kawai KPS-110). Because of the nature of these measures, the response latency of the first word in each list could not be counted, and the time duration taken to read each list was divided by the number of the items minus 1, thus producing the mean duration per word/nonword.
NAMING
WORDS
IN KANJI
AND KANA
687
RESULTS Numerals Were Named Faster in Kanji Than in Kana The introspection data provided by the subjects were very clear. All the subjects reported that numerals were easier to name in kanji than in kana but that common nouns were easier to name in kana than in kanji. Their introspections were borne out by the time duration data. The mean time duration per word of each set for each subject is presented in Table 2. A 2 by 2 (script: kanji and kana, and word type: numeral and common noun) analysis of variance with repeated measures on each factor was performed for each subject, and the results are summarized in Table 3. Table 3 indicates that although the effect of script is not significant, the effect of word type is significant for all the subjects, showing that the numeral set was named faster than was the common noun set. The interaction was significant for 3 subjects but not for the other 3 subjects. However, the result that the numeral set took less time to name than did the common noun set could be attributed to the fact that kanji numerals were named far faster than were kanji common nouns, with kana numerals being named equally fast as the kana common nouns. Indeed, the difference in time duration between numerals and common nouns in kana was not significant for 5 subjects [mean t(9) = .38 ranging from -.92 to 1.12.1 The difference between numerals and common nouns in kana was significant for a female subject T.S. [t(9) = 2.75, p < .05], who named kana numerals an average of 16 msec faster than kana common nouns. However, she named kanji numerals an average of 21 msec faster than kana numerals. Thus, her response pattern is essentially the same as those of the other subjects. In all, therefore, kanji numerals were named fastest, followed by kana numerals and kana common nouns, with kanji common nouns being named slowest of all. These results are consistent with the selection difficulty hypothesis. Kana Words Were Named Faster Than Kana Nonwords Subject introspections for this task were also in complete agreement. Both subjects told the experimenter that words were named more smoothly than were nonwords. Time duration data supported their introspections. The mean time duration per word/nonword for each subject is presented in Table 4. A 2 by 2 (2 subjects, and lexicality: word and nonword) analysis of variance with repeated measures on the second variable was performed. The effects of subject and lexicality, and the interaction, were all significant [F(l, 18) = 12.87, p < .OOl for subject, F(l, 18) = 22.93, p < .OOl for lexicality, and F(l, 18) = 4.66, p < .05 for the interaction]. The main interest here is in the result that orthographically unfamiliar kana words were named significantly faster than orthographically unfamiliar kana nonwords. (why there is a significant interaction is not of particular relevance here.) Together with Besner and Hildebrandt’s (1987) study on katakana, the present result indicates that words, whether written in hiragana or in katakana, take less time to name than do nonwords.
688
JUN YAMADA TABLE 2 MEAN TIME DURATION(S.D.) IN MILLJSECONDS PERNUMERAL ANDCOMMONNOUNFOREACH SUBJECT Numerals
Subject T.M M.I. E.I. K.O. T.A. T.S. Mean
Kanji
Common Nouns Kana
205(26)
249(32)
219 (26)
284(55) 277(44)
223(15)
194 (12) 271 (14) 250(19) 227(19)
Kanji 367(53) 369(88) 366(65) 243(22) 328(29) 302(25)
219 (41) 308(51) 271 (16) 268 (40)
329(47)
Kana 273(33) 260(32) 270(23) 234(13) 309(34) 286(32) 272(28)
Constituent Kanji of Personal Nameswere Named Slower Than the Kana Transcriptions Once again, the introspection data were unambiguous,with all 4 subjectsreporting that kana were easierto name than kanji. To a question asto whether the meaning occurred to them when reading aloud each constituent kanji, they replied negatively. The mean time duration per item for each subject is presented in Table 5. The two pairs were analyzed separately by a 2 by 2 (subject, and script: kanji and kana) analysis of variance with repeated measureson the TABLE 3 RESULTSOF ANOVA FOREACHSIJHECT Subject T.M.
Effect
Script Word type Interaction
M.I.
E.I.
K.O.
T.A.
T.S.
F
P
2.70 8.56 6.41
c.05 ==.05
Direction
>.lO
Script Word type Interaction
2.28
>.lO
7.16 6.12
c.05 c.05
Script Word type Interaction
1.90
>.lO
6.46 7.47
c.05 c.05
Script Word type Interaction
1.02
>.lO
6.51 2.94
c.05
script Word type Interaction
.53 5.95 4.54
Script Word type Interaction
1.02 6.51 2.94
Nu < Corn. N
Nu < Corn. N
Nu < Corn. N
Nu < Corn. N
>.lO >.lO c.05 C.08
Nu < Corn. N
>.lO c.05
>.lO
Nu < Corn. N
NAMING
WORDS
IN KANJI
TABLE MEAN
TIME DURATION
(SD)
AND
689
KANA
4
IN MILLISECONDS
PER WORD
AND NOWORD IN KANA
Subject
Word
Nonword
Y.M. Y.O. Mean
315 (52) 285 (42) 300 (47)
409 (63) 321 (26) 365 (45)
second variable. For the M.U. pan, both effects of subject and script were significant [F(l, 18) = 5.76,~ < .05 for subject, and F(l, 18) = 25.46, p < .OOl for script], while the interaction was not. The significant effect of subject may reflect M.U.‘s familiarity with her name. For the U.O. pair, the effect of script approached a significant level [F(l, 18) = 3.54, .05 < p < . lo], but neither the effect of subject nor the interaction was significant [F(l, 18) = 2.92, n.s. for subject, and F( 1, 18) < 1.OOfor the interaction]. These results are in accord with the selection difficulty hypothesis, but not with the dual-route hypothesis. DISCUSSION Numerals in Kanji and Kana The results were clear enough although the number of subjects was small. That is, numerals were named an average of 41 msec faster in kanji than in kana. This cannot be accounted for by Feldman and Turvey’s (1980) dual-route hypothesis, according to which naming kanji words should always be longer because it is mediated via semantic access. Nor can it adequately be explained by the word-constituent familiarity hypothesis because even high-frequency kanji words (e.g., h and ]I]) whose familiarity seems comparable to the familiarity of individual kana (e.g., u,k , &, and h) took an average of 58 msec longer than their kana transcriptions (e.g., 0 2 and fix h). On the other hand, the selection difficulty hypothesis easily explains these seemingly contradictory findings. The process of naming a kanji common noun could, according to the hypothesis, be explained as follows: First, the subject performs a visual analysis of the stimulus kanji; next, through the visual analysis, one or more two-character kanji words in which the stimulus kanji is embedded are retrieved from longterm memory; third, the subject decomposes the kanji word(s) to distinguish the TABLE MEAN
Subject M.U. Friend Mean
1
M.O. Friend 2 Mean
TIME DURATION
(SD)
IN MILLISECONDS
5 PER CONSTITUENT
OF PERSONAL
NAME
Kanji
Kana
289 (67) 347 (66) 318 (67)
226 (33) 242 (20) 234 (27)
343 (121) 375 (121) 359 (121)
298 (45) 327 (31) 313 (38)
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JUN YAMADA
target kanji from irrelevant kanji; the target kanji selected in this way is then produced. In naming a kanji numeral, however, the subject would be able to go through the second and third stages quickly because, due to the numeral’s main function as a free morpheme, the kanji numeral becomes very salient even when embedded in a quasi-word. Or instead of the second and third stages, there might be only one stage in which a kanji numeral as such is retrieved with no accompanying bound morpheme because it is the most familiar form. Moreover, since kanji numerals are as familiar to adult Japanese as individual kana, it would not be surprising that a kanji numeral would be named faster than a string of two kana. The selection difficulty hypothesis appears to be closely related to readings (speech interpretations) for kanji common nouns which are more ambiguous than are readings for kanji numerals. However, the ambiguous readings of kanji common nouns do not seem to be a critical factor in yielding the difference in naming time between numerals and common nouns in kanji. In fact, Goryo (1987) compared kanji possessing only one reading (e.g., % /dai/ meaning “titie” and 1 /sen/ meaning “line”) and their kana transcriptions (e.g., g k’ and * A), but found a kana advantage over kanji, an advantage which is by and large comparable with that for other kanji words. The selection difficulty hypothesis can explain this apparently baffling finding by means of the above fourstage process, arguing that for BBi,for example, after the visual analysis, Z&% (/shut meaning “theme”) may be retrieved in the second stage because it is a more familiar word than % itself, that the word is then to be segmented into two, 4: and fl, and that one of them is picked out to name. This processing requires considerable time. In this regard, it is interesting to note that mismatching errors occur in learning new two-character kanji words among school children. That is, Yamada (1988) found that, given an on (Chinese)-reading kanji (a bound morpheme) for reading, some children were able to retrieve a two-character kanji word which contains the target bound morpheme kanji, but they read (wrote in kana) the other constituent of the word, e.g., given l% (Isetsuf) as a test item, * \’ (Imeif) was preduced instead of * 3 (/sets&), probably because they correctly retrieved t#. a! (isetsu-meil), but incorrectly matched * \’ and ?ti .
Besner and Hildebrandt (1987) indicated that naming times are shorter for unconventional katakana words than katakana nonwords. The present findings complement Besner and Hildebrandt’s findings by showing that naming times are also shorter for unconvention~ hiragana words than for hiragana nonwords. Clearly, these results refute the claim that naming kana words has no recourse to lexicality or meaning; instead, naming kana words is somehow facilitated by their lexicality. But how they are facilitated is an important question. One possible answer involves a theory of paired-associate learning. Underwood and Schulz (1960) have shown that the more familiar, meaningful, and/or pro-
NAMING
WORDS
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AND
KANA
691
nounceable the response item is, the faster paired-associate learning takes place. Steinberg and Yamada (1978) found such an effect for the learning of kanji and kana. It thus follows that the more familiar, meaningful, and/or pronounceable the response item is, the faster it is retrieved. Now we can view word/nonword naming as a special version of a paired-associate learning paradigm with a kana word/nonword as a stimulus item and the corresponding phonological shape as a response item. Obviously, a phonological form is more familiar, meaningful, and pronounceable for a word than for a nonword. In this regard, it may be worthy of note that one subject reported that nonwords were difficult to pronounce, e.g., a nonword 3 0 (/tsuhi/) was more difficult than is 3 5 (/tsuchi/ meaning “mud”). It should be noted in passing that differences between the kanji numeral and noun sets above may not be attributable to the difference in familiarity, meaningfulness, and pronounceability between their speech forms because such differences were generally not significant between the same sets for kana. However, when considering familiarity in free and bound morphemes, familiarity may generally entail both meaningfulness and pronounceability. Meaningless Kanji and Kana Constituents in Personal Names If a given kanji is meaningless, it is likely to be pronounced directly without recourse to meaning. Kanji constituents in personal names are likely to be far less meaningful than are kanji constituents in common nouns because the main function of the former is to represent sound. Moreover, overuse of a personal name would tend to make it less meaningful. Given that constituent kanji in personal names are less meaningful, the present study has found that kanji took significantly longer times to name than kana, the difference being comparable to the difference for the common noun set (Tables 2 and 5). These findings cannot be accounted for by the dual-route hypothesis. However, according to the selection difficulty hypothesis, it follows that kanji personal names are sometimes so difficult to segment into constituent kanji that more time is taken in selecting the right constituent kanji in a name. Indeed some confusion errors which support this hypothesis were observed in the kanji naming condition. For example, M.U. made insertion errors (e.g., “. . . % % f . . .” for “. . . % &‘. . .“) and transposition errors (e.g., “. . .3! I.. .” for “. . . $” % . . .“), which can be attributed to the difficulty involved in segmenting her first name % @ f%. Such confusion errors were absent in the kana condition. Explanatory Power of the Selection Difsiculty Hypothesis in Aphasic Cases The selection difficulty hypothesis can contribute to research on neurolinguistic phenomena such as deep and surface dyslexia in Japanese. (See Paradis, Hagiwara, and Hildebrandt, 1985, for a comprehensive review of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research on kanji and kana.) Two cases deserve mention here. One is that of a 50-year-old man with a right-sided homonymous heminopia reported by Sakamoto (1940, quoted by
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JUN YAMADA
Sasanuma, 1980). It was shown that kanji compound words tended to be easier for him to name than single-character words, e.g., he was able to read s g lI8 (/jou-ba-tai/ meaning “cavalry”) but was unable to read each component ff , I, and !# when presented individually. Such difficulty appears to arise from two interacting sources: lesser familiarity with kanji bound morphemes than with two- or three-kanji words and the selection difficulty involving two- and threekanji words. Another case was reported by Sasanuma (1983, in which the oral reading performance of a subject S.U. is described. S.U. was 46 years old and had a 27month history of aphasia due to CVA, followed by an operation to remove a hematoma in the subcortical region of the left temporal lobe. According to Sasanuma, his kanji performance on concrete nouns (55% correct) was far better than the performance on abstract nouns (15% correct), adjectives (20% correct), and verbs (15% correct). However, the errors reported appear to suggest that one-character kanji words are more difficult for him than are two-character kanji words, but not that abstract nouns, adjective, and verbs are more difficult than concrete nouns. For example, the following oral reading errors were committed by S.U.: a concrete noun, P9 (/man/ meaning “gate”) + /iriguchi/ ( I\ Cl meaning “entrance”); an abstract noun, fl + /jinja/ ( @ ti meaning “shrine”); an adjective, #I c’ (Asuyo-i/ meaning “strong”) + /kata-i/ ( E&lE’ meaning “hard”); a verb, M s (/to-bu/ meaning “to fly”) + /hikoki/ ( # fi 8 meaning “airplane”). The error of the kanji adjective seems to have been produced through a four-step process, vis., through visual analysis the stimulus item ti c’ activated a more familiar two-character kanji word, $lk [81 (/kyoko/ meaning “solidity”), a more familiar constituent l&l was then incorrectly selected, and finally the constituent 141was attached another (correct) reading /kata-/. It seems that these errors are not unique to deep and surface dyslexics but that they appear even among normal children learning kanji words. The same mechanisms involving selection difficulty in the kanji system may be responsible for these kanji errors. REFERENCES Besner, D., & Hildebrandt, N. 1987. orthographic and phonological codes in the oral reading of Japanese kana. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13, 335-343. Clark, H. H., & Clark, E. V. 1977. Psychology and language. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Carroll, J. B., & White, M. 1973. Age-of-acquisition norms for 220 picturable nouns. Journal of Verbal Behavior and Verbal Learning, 12,563-576. Feldman, L. B., L Turvey, M. T. 1980. Words written in kana are named faster than the same words written in kanji. Language and Speech, 23,141-147. Goryo, K. 1987. [On reading]. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai. Hayashi, 0. 1982. [Japanese in diagrams]. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten. Nomura, Y. 1981. [The information processing of kanji, kana script: The effects of data-driven and conceptually-driven processing on reading]. Japanese Journal of Psychology, 51,327-334. Paradis, M., Hagiwara, H., & Hildebrandt, N. 1985. Neurolinguistic aspects of the Japanese written system. Tokyo: Academic Press Japan.
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Sasanuma, S. 1980. Acquired dyslexia in Japanese: Clinical features and underlying mechanisms. In M. Coltheart, K. Patterson, & .I. C. Marshall (Eds.), Deep dyslexia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pp. 48-90. Sasanuma, S. 1985. Surface dyslexia and dysgraphia: How are they manifested in Japanese? In K. E. Patterson, J. C. Marshall, & M. Coltheart (Eds.), Surface dyslexia. London: Erlbaum. Pp. 225-249. Steinberg, D. D., & Yamada, J. 1978. Are whole word kanji easier to learn than syllable kana? Reading Research Quarterly, 14,88-99. Underwood, B. J., & Schulz, R. W. 1960. Meaningfulness and verbal learning. Philadelphia: Lippincott. Yamada, J. 1988. Asymmetries of reading and spelling in Japanese children. Paper presented at the Script & Literacy Conference, McLuhau Program, University of Toronto, Toronto. June 4. Yamada, J., Imai, H., & Ikebe, Y. 1990. The use of the orthographic lexicon in reading kana words. Journal of General Psychology, 117,31 l-323.
AND LANGUAGE
43,682-693
(1992)
Why Are Kana Words Named Faster Than Kanji Words? JUN YAMADA
Feldman and Turvey (1980) found that colors conventionally written in kanji (a logographic script) are named slower than are the unconventional kana (a syllabic script) transcriptions of the kanji color words. This surprising finding was attributed to the closer relation of kana to phonology, which is consonant with the general dual-route theory. However, the present study has shown that kanji numerals are namedfaster than are the corresponding kana numerals. A hypothesis involving selection difficulty inherent in most kanji is presented to explain those apparently conflicting results. Some implications for further research on the kanji versus kana issue are also discussed. 0 1992 Academic Press. Inc.
Which do native speakersof Japanesename faster, kana (a syllabic script) or kanji (a logographic script)? It has seemedthat naming latencies are shorter for words written in kana than for the samewords written in kanji. This surprising result was first made by Feldman and Turvey (1980). These investigators showed that six color words in kana are named faster than are the samecolor words in kanji. This finding was impressive becausecolor words are normally written in kanji rather than in kana. Feldman and Turvey reasonedthat the superiority of kana over kanji is attributed to the closer relation of kana to phonology, which is consonantwith the general dual-route hypothesis which statesthat kanji processinggoesdirectly to meaning and then to sound, whereaskana processing goes to meaning via sound. (However, see Besner and Hildebrandt, 1987, and Yamada, Imai, and Ikebe, 1990, for the dual-route issue for kana.) The kana superiority effect has also been observed for other words. Thus, Nomura (198 l), Goryo (1987), and others have found that kana transcriptions of common kanji words such as lb (/yama/ meaning “hill”) and % (/doku/meaning “poison”) alsotake lesslatency to name than do the common kanji words. Despite these findings, however, research involving the theory of dual-route for kanji and kana is not without problems. Among others, failure to control two I am indebted to Professor Danny Steinberg, Surugadai University, who provided and suggested important improvements in the manuscript. Address correspondence quests to Professor Jun Yamada, Faculty of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Hiroshima 89, Higashi-Senda, Naka-Ku, Hiroshima 730, Japan. 682 0093-934x/92
$5.00
Copyri@~t 0 1992 by Academic F’ress, Inc. All rights of repnxluction in any form reserved.
valuable advice and reprint reUniversity, l-l-
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essential variables concerning familiarity of the kanji and kana scripts is the most serious. Two hypotheses may be put forth concerning these important variables. One may be called the word-constituent familiarity hypothesis. It is certainly true that @, for example, is a form more familiar to adult Japanese than is its corresponding 2 ( . But it is also true that each constituent kana form tf and ( is much more familiar than the form 8. The empirical question therefore should be as to which is named faster, two more-familiar items combined (i.e., two-character kana) or a single less-familiar item (i.e., one-character kanji), rather than a low-frequency kana word or a high-frequency kanji word. Then the results reported in the previous literature could be taken as suggesting that a string of two more-familiar items (i.e., a kana word) is named faster than is a single less-familiar item (i.e., a kanji word). The other problem may be called the selection difficulty hypothesis. The retrieval of kanji seems to be greatly influenced by how they are stored in longterm memory. While most individual kanji represent both free and bound morphemes (e.g., h /hito/ meaning “person” as a free morpheme, and h Q /hitobito/ meaning “people,” h 88 /ningen/ meaning “human being,” and El * h /nipponjin/ meaning “Japanese,” as bound morphemes), bound morphemes appear far more frequently in familiar forms than as free morphemes (cf. Hayashi, 1982). Thus, when A, for example, is presented as a stimulus item or a cue, A, as a bound morpheme embedded in A b , A 88, and/or El * A rather than as simply A, a free morpheme, may be retrieved. If this is the case, the reading of an individual kanji appropriate to the cue must be selected from among the word(s) retrieved, thus requiring some additional time to name depending on how difficult such a selection is. This hypothesis is an extension of Clark and Clark’s (1977) view of naming objects. Note that this hypothesis does not necessarily assume that the processing of kanji goes directly to meaning from print. Also note that selection difficulty may be experienced even if a kanji has only one reading, provided that it is firmly embedded in a word. In light of this line of reasoning, the findings reported by Feldman and Turvey (1980) and others are interpreted as reflecting this selection difficulty effect inherent in most kanji. Highlighting these basic aspects of familiarity in the present study, we can compare three hypotheses, the dual-route, word-constituent familiarity, and selection difficulty hypotheses, each of which would make a different prediction. The question in point is whether unconventional kana words are always named faster than are the corresponding conventional kanji words. Specifically, two questions may be addressed. First, what happens if the familiarity of single kanji, which may function more frequently as bound morphemes than as free morphemes, is roughly comparable to that of single kana? Second, what happens if the familiarity of single kanji, which may function more frequently as free morphemes than as bound morphemes, is roughly comparable to that of single kana? Are such kanji words, if any, still named slower than are the kana transcriptions? As a matter of fact, such kanji are found in the first part of a Japanese
684
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primer for first graders, in which a few of the most familiar kanji words are introduced along with all types of kana. These basic kanji are among the high-frequency kanji in adult literature as well. Examples include numerals such as 3 (/san/ meaning “three”) and h (/go/ meaning “five”) and common nouns such as * (/ki/ meaning “tree”) and Cl (/kuchi/ meaning “mouth”). Furthermore, if the age of acquisition of graphemes as well as words is a good index of familiarity (cf. Carroll and White, 1973), those individual kana and basic kanji could be more or less comparable in terms of familiarity, being acquired at almost the same earliest stage of literacy. They could have resided in long-term memory for the longest period of time. Feldman and Turvey’s (1980) dual-route hypothesis would predict that even very familiar kanji words, whether they are frequently used as free morphemes or not, are named slower than are the kana transcriptions. By contrast, the wordconstituent familiarity hypothesis would claim that if familiarity, regardless of the context in which kanji appear, is the single best predictor of retrieval speed, then no significant difference between familiar kanji words and familiar kana strings, or even a kanji superiority effect, would be observed if a single kanji is as familiar as each of the component kana in the kana transcription. (A kanji in general corresponds to two kana.) On the other hand, if the selection difficulty hypothesis is correct, it would suggest that the selection difficulty of familiar kanji normally used as free morphemes would be negligible so that those kanji are named as fast as or even faster than are the corresponding kana transcriptions, with the result that free morpheme kanji are named faster than bound morpheme kanji. Regarding kana, the hypothesis would predict that since each kana is stored associated with a specific mora (or syllable) independently of other kana-mora correspondences in long-term memory, no selection difficulty would occur in the naming task. In addition to the comparison of these hypotheses, it is of interest to evaluate the validity of each route of the dual-route hypothesis from somewhat different angles. Concerning the print to sound route, Danny Steinberg (1991, personal communication) has suggested that the pyschological reality of the print-tosound-to-meaning route for kana may be examined by comparing naming times of words and nonwords written in kana. Nonwords could only be pronounced by recourse to kana-sound correspondences. Thus if they are named as fast as words in kana, that would suggest that the kana-to-sound route is psychologically plausible. Recently, however, Besner and Hildebrandt (1987) have found a reaction time advantage of orthographically unfamiliar katakana words over katakana nonwords, thus arguing for lexical access of words in kana achieved without reference to phonology, i.e., direct access to meaning. While katakana are used mainly to represent foreign loan words, hiragana are used to represent function words and some content words. Whether or not the same results would be obtained for hiragana is an empirical question. Thus a comparison of naming words and nonwords in hiragana was also included in this study. With regard to the direct semantic route for kanji, it may be possible to com-
NAMING
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pare naming times of meaningless kanji and kana. One possible set of meaningless kanji involves kanji constituents appearing in personal names. The dualroute hypothesis would expect that such constituent kanji, if randomly ordered, would be named as fast as the corresponding kana. But the selection difficulty hypothesis would predict that the former would be named slower than the latter because the constituents are so firmly embedded in the name that segmenting it and selecting the right constituent would be difficult. This issue was also addressed in this study. METHOD Subjects The subjects male. All were of the subjects word sets, and
were 12 Hiroshima University undergraduates, 21 to 22 years old, 11 females and 1 considered good readers of Japanese, none having a history of a speech problem. Six were assigned numeral and common noun sets, 2 were assigned kana word and non4 were assigned personal name sets.
Stimuli Numerals as free morphemes and common nouns as bound morphemes. Two sets of words were selected from a Japanese primer for first graders which was authorized by the Ministry of Education. One set consisted of 10 kanji numerals and their kana transcriptions, and the other set consisted of 9 high-frequency common nouns and their kana transcriptions. The kanji words were conventional while their kana transcriptions unconventional. Table 1 shows the test stimuli. According to Hayashi (1982). these kanji numerals range in frequency rank (based on counts of newspapers) from the 2nd to the 57th highest; and 5 common nouns of 9 ranging from the 6th to the 73rd highest (for the remaining 4 nouns, frequency data are not available). Thus the mean frequency was somewhat higher for the numeral set than for the common noun set. Numerals are basically regarded as free morphemes even though in some cases they may be used as bound morphemes. Take 3 A (Isan-nin/ meaning “three people”) for example. The numeral 3 (a free morpheme) and the following h (a bound morpheme) combine to form a quasi-word which is neither a word nor a compound word. It is simply not a word, and no dictionary has an entry for it. Nor is it a compound word, because h (/nin/ in this case) is not a word but a bound morpheme. Because it is a free morpheme, 3 in 3 h is salient and easy to isolate and select. In contrast, the common nouns in Table 1 function as both free and bound morphemes. Although no frequency counts of free and bound morphemes are readily available, the data in Hayashi (1982) strongly suggest that those kanji are used much more frequently as bound morphemes than as free morphemes; such data are in good agreement with the intuition of adult Japanese. (It should be noted, however, that those common nouns first appear as free morphemes in Japanese primers for first graders.) Thus if selecting the target bound morpheme kanji embedded in a word is really difficult, those kanji common nouns would take longer to name than kanji numerals. Twenty-two numeral lists (11 kanji and 11 kana lists), each composed of 12 numeral items, and 22 common noun lists (11 kanji and 11 kana lists), each composed of 9 words, respectively, were formed from each word set. The words in each list were randomly ordered, but the orders in 2 lists of 11 were the same for the kanji and kana versions. Each list of words was typed horizontally on a strip, so that a total of 44 lists (4 practice lists and 40 test lists) was produced. Words and nonwords in kana. Nine nonwords were constructed by arranging the constituent kana used in the common noun set (Table 1). Eight of these nonwords had the same initial kana as the words. Employing a similar procedure to that employed for the common noun set, 11 nonword lists (1 practice list and 10 test lists) were made, and these were used along with the common noun lists. Kanji and kana in personal names. Two personal names each composed of 5 kanji were chosen
686
JUN YAMADA TABLE 1 TESTSTIMULIFORTHENAMINGTASKS
Numerals Kanji Kana Reading Meaning
o-:=pje4 ei3 zero 0
c\%J ichi 1
IZ ni 2
Common nouns Kanji LLlk Kana 91 Reading yama Meaning hill
3% ue “P
7; Lt-, shita bottom
Nonwords Kana Reading
52 “to
LX shie
Personal names MU. Kanji Kana Reading Y.O. Kanji Kma Reading
972 YaQ & 385 Ume k &k’lj’ 00
ik bt-, kita
8% S.Ul 3
&A4 yen 4
z go 5
A 3( roku 6
+I t. iii nana 7
/l
h
ra%J hachi 8
SIP3 ky” 9
JII
q
*
Ik
k
A
i~h kawa river
(% kuchi mouth
$ ki tree
9% tsuchi mud
73 hi tire
02 hito person
%fP chika
< ku
q
% ;4 Mi &J
g 5 chi s
$”
k ta
NJ Yu
a mi
L ko
3% kima
90 tsuhi
u hi
Oh hiwa
R k
(Table 1). Each constituent kanji and their corresponding kana forms were then randomly ordered to form 11 kanji lists and 11 kana lists. Each list consisted of 9 items with some items appearing twice.
Procedure Six subjects assigned the numeral and common noun sets read aloud 2 practice numeral lists and 20 test numeral lists (10 kanji and 10 kana lists) in a session, and 2 practice common noun lists and 20 test common noun lists (10 kanji and 10 kana lists) in another session. The subject was asked to read each of the items on the list out loud as quickly but as accurately as possible. Three of the subjects started with the numeral lists, alternating the kanji and kana lists in that order, whereas the remaining three subjects started with the common noun lists, alternating the kana and kanji lists in that order. That is, 1 practice trial and 10 trials were given to each subject, each trial consisting of reading of a pair of 1 kanji and 1 kana list. Short breaks were given between trials when a subject wanted to have one. Two subjects assigned the kana word and nonword sets read aloud 2 practice lists (1 kana word list and 1 nonword list) and 20 test lists (10 word and 10 nonword lists). They were thus given 1 practice trial and 10 test trials. On each trial, they read aloud a pair of kana word and nonword lists. Two pairs of subjects participated in the personal name task, one pair with M.U. and her friend, and the other with Y.O. and her friend (Table 1). The M.U. pair was given the M.U. lists consisting of M.U.‘s kanji and kana, and the Y.O. pair, the Y.O. lists consisting Y.O.‘s kanji and kana. The procedure was the same as that for the other subjects for the other tasks. The subjects’ readings of the lists were all tape-recorded in a quiet room. Time durations for reading the lists were measured by means of an oscillograph in the order of 9 msec and when necessary a soundspectrograph in the order of 4 msec (Kawai KPS-110). Because of the nature of these measures, the response latency of the first word in each list could not be counted, and the time duration taken to read each list was divided by the number of the items minus 1, thus producing the mean duration per word/nonword.
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RESULTS Numerals Were Named Faster in Kanji Than in Kana The introspection data provided by the subjects were very clear. All the subjects reported that numerals were easier to name in kanji than in kana but that common nouns were easier to name in kana than in kanji. Their introspections were borne out by the time duration data. The mean time duration per word of each set for each subject is presented in Table 2. A 2 by 2 (script: kanji and kana, and word type: numeral and common noun) analysis of variance with repeated measures on each factor was performed for each subject, and the results are summarized in Table 3. Table 3 indicates that although the effect of script is not significant, the effect of word type is significant for all the subjects, showing that the numeral set was named faster than was the common noun set. The interaction was significant for 3 subjects but not for the other 3 subjects. However, the result that the numeral set took less time to name than did the common noun set could be attributed to the fact that kanji numerals were named far faster than were kanji common nouns, with kana numerals being named equally fast as the kana common nouns. Indeed, the difference in time duration between numerals and common nouns in kana was not significant for 5 subjects [mean t(9) = .38 ranging from -.92 to 1.12.1 The difference between numerals and common nouns in kana was significant for a female subject T.S. [t(9) = 2.75, p < .05], who named kana numerals an average of 16 msec faster than kana common nouns. However, she named kanji numerals an average of 21 msec faster than kana numerals. Thus, her response pattern is essentially the same as those of the other subjects. In all, therefore, kanji numerals were named fastest, followed by kana numerals and kana common nouns, with kanji common nouns being named slowest of all. These results are consistent with the selection difficulty hypothesis. Kana Words Were Named Faster Than Kana Nonwords Subject introspections for this task were also in complete agreement. Both subjects told the experimenter that words were named more smoothly than were nonwords. Time duration data supported their introspections. The mean time duration per word/nonword for each subject is presented in Table 4. A 2 by 2 (2 subjects, and lexicality: word and nonword) analysis of variance with repeated measures on the second variable was performed. The effects of subject and lexicality, and the interaction, were all significant [F(l, 18) = 12.87, p < .OOl for subject, F(l, 18) = 22.93, p < .OOl for lexicality, and F(l, 18) = 4.66, p < .05 for the interaction]. The main interest here is in the result that orthographically unfamiliar kana words were named significantly faster than orthographically unfamiliar kana nonwords. (why there is a significant interaction is not of particular relevance here.) Together with Besner and Hildebrandt’s (1987) study on katakana, the present result indicates that words, whether written in hiragana or in katakana, take less time to name than do nonwords.
688
JUN YAMADA TABLE 2 MEAN TIME DURATION(S.D.) IN MILLJSECONDS PERNUMERAL ANDCOMMONNOUNFOREACH SUBJECT Numerals
Subject T.M M.I. E.I. K.O. T.A. T.S. Mean
Kanji
Common Nouns Kana
205(26)
249(32)
219 (26)
284(55) 277(44)
223(15)
194 (12) 271 (14) 250(19) 227(19)
Kanji 367(53) 369(88) 366(65) 243(22) 328(29) 302(25)
219 (41) 308(51) 271 (16) 268 (40)
329(47)
Kana 273(33) 260(32) 270(23) 234(13) 309(34) 286(32) 272(28)
Constituent Kanji of Personal Nameswere Named Slower Than the Kana Transcriptions Once again, the introspection data were unambiguous,with all 4 subjectsreporting that kana were easierto name than kanji. To a question asto whether the meaning occurred to them when reading aloud each constituent kanji, they replied negatively. The mean time duration per item for each subject is presented in Table 5. The two pairs were analyzed separately by a 2 by 2 (subject, and script: kanji and kana) analysis of variance with repeated measureson the TABLE 3 RESULTSOF ANOVA FOREACHSIJHECT Subject T.M.
Effect
Script Word type Interaction
M.I.
E.I.
K.O.
T.A.
T.S.
F
P
2.70 8.56 6.41
c.05 ==.05
Direction
>.lO
Script Word type Interaction
2.28
>.lO
7.16 6.12
c.05 c.05
Script Word type Interaction
1.90
>.lO
6.46 7.47
c.05 c.05
Script Word type Interaction
1.02
>.lO
6.51 2.94
c.05
script Word type Interaction
.53 5.95 4.54
Script Word type Interaction
1.02 6.51 2.94
Nu < Corn. N
Nu < Corn. N
Nu < Corn. N
Nu < Corn. N
>.lO >.lO c.05 C.08
Nu < Corn. N
>.lO c.05
>.lO
Nu < Corn. N
NAMING
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TABLE MEAN
TIME DURATION
(SD)
AND
689
KANA
4
IN MILLISECONDS
PER WORD
AND NOWORD IN KANA
Subject
Word
Nonword
Y.M. Y.O. Mean
315 (52) 285 (42) 300 (47)
409 (63) 321 (26) 365 (45)
second variable. For the M.U. pan, both effects of subject and script were significant [F(l, 18) = 5.76,~ < .05 for subject, and F(l, 18) = 25.46, p < .OOl for script], while the interaction was not. The significant effect of subject may reflect M.U.‘s familiarity with her name. For the U.O. pair, the effect of script approached a significant level [F(l, 18) = 3.54, .05 < p < . lo], but neither the effect of subject nor the interaction was significant [F(l, 18) = 2.92, n.s. for subject, and F( 1, 18) < 1.OOfor the interaction]. These results are in accord with the selection difficulty hypothesis, but not with the dual-route hypothesis. DISCUSSION Numerals in Kanji and Kana The results were clear enough although the number of subjects was small. That is, numerals were named an average of 41 msec faster in kanji than in kana. This cannot be accounted for by Feldman and Turvey’s (1980) dual-route hypothesis, according to which naming kanji words should always be longer because it is mediated via semantic access. Nor can it adequately be explained by the word-constituent familiarity hypothesis because even high-frequency kanji words (e.g., h and ]I]) whose familiarity seems comparable to the familiarity of individual kana (e.g., u,k , &, and h) took an average of 58 msec longer than their kana transcriptions (e.g., 0 2 and fix h). On the other hand, the selection difficulty hypothesis easily explains these seemingly contradictory findings. The process of naming a kanji common noun could, according to the hypothesis, be explained as follows: First, the subject performs a visual analysis of the stimulus kanji; next, through the visual analysis, one or more two-character kanji words in which the stimulus kanji is embedded are retrieved from longterm memory; third, the subject decomposes the kanji word(s) to distinguish the TABLE MEAN
Subject M.U. Friend Mean
1
M.O. Friend 2 Mean
TIME DURATION
(SD)
IN MILLISECONDS
5 PER CONSTITUENT
OF PERSONAL
NAME
Kanji
Kana
289 (67) 347 (66) 318 (67)
226 (33) 242 (20) 234 (27)
343 (121) 375 (121) 359 (121)
298 (45) 327 (31) 313 (38)
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JUN YAMADA
target kanji from irrelevant kanji; the target kanji selected in this way is then produced. In naming a kanji numeral, however, the subject would be able to go through the second and third stages quickly because, due to the numeral’s main function as a free morpheme, the kanji numeral becomes very salient even when embedded in a quasi-word. Or instead of the second and third stages, there might be only one stage in which a kanji numeral as such is retrieved with no accompanying bound morpheme because it is the most familiar form. Moreover, since kanji numerals are as familiar to adult Japanese as individual kana, it would not be surprising that a kanji numeral would be named faster than a string of two kana. The selection difficulty hypothesis appears to be closely related to readings (speech interpretations) for kanji common nouns which are more ambiguous than are readings for kanji numerals. However, the ambiguous readings of kanji common nouns do not seem to be a critical factor in yielding the difference in naming time between numerals and common nouns in kanji. In fact, Goryo (1987) compared kanji possessing only one reading (e.g., % /dai/ meaning “titie” and 1 /sen/ meaning “line”) and their kana transcriptions (e.g., g k’ and * A), but found a kana advantage over kanji, an advantage which is by and large comparable with that for other kanji words. The selection difficulty hypothesis can explain this apparently baffling finding by means of the above fourstage process, arguing that for BBi,for example, after the visual analysis, Z&% (/shut meaning “theme”) may be retrieved in the second stage because it is a more familiar word than % itself, that the word is then to be segmented into two, 4: and fl, and that one of them is picked out to name. This processing requires considerable time. In this regard, it is interesting to note that mismatching errors occur in learning new two-character kanji words among school children. That is, Yamada (1988) found that, given an on (Chinese)-reading kanji (a bound morpheme) for reading, some children were able to retrieve a two-character kanji word which contains the target bound morpheme kanji, but they read (wrote in kana) the other constituent of the word, e.g., given l% (Isetsuf) as a test item, * \’ (Imeif) was preduced instead of * 3 (/sets&), probably because they correctly retrieved t#. a! (isetsu-meil), but incorrectly matched * \’ and ?ti .
Besner and Hildebrandt (1987) indicated that naming times are shorter for unconventional katakana words than katakana nonwords. The present findings complement Besner and Hildebrandt’s findings by showing that naming times are also shorter for unconvention~ hiragana words than for hiragana nonwords. Clearly, these results refute the claim that naming kana words has no recourse to lexicality or meaning; instead, naming kana words is somehow facilitated by their lexicality. But how they are facilitated is an important question. One possible answer involves a theory of paired-associate learning. Underwood and Schulz (1960) have shown that the more familiar, meaningful, and/or pro-
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nounceable the response item is, the faster paired-associate learning takes place. Steinberg and Yamada (1978) found such an effect for the learning of kanji and kana. It thus follows that the more familiar, meaningful, and/or pronounceable the response item is, the faster it is retrieved. Now we can view word/nonword naming as a special version of a paired-associate learning paradigm with a kana word/nonword as a stimulus item and the corresponding phonological shape as a response item. Obviously, a phonological form is more familiar, meaningful, and pronounceable for a word than for a nonword. In this regard, it may be worthy of note that one subject reported that nonwords were difficult to pronounce, e.g., a nonword 3 0 (/tsuhi/) was more difficult than is 3 5 (/tsuchi/ meaning “mud”). It should be noted in passing that differences between the kanji numeral and noun sets above may not be attributable to the difference in familiarity, meaningfulness, and pronounceability between their speech forms because such differences were generally not significant between the same sets for kana. However, when considering familiarity in free and bound morphemes, familiarity may generally entail both meaningfulness and pronounceability. Meaningless Kanji and Kana Constituents in Personal Names If a given kanji is meaningless, it is likely to be pronounced directly without recourse to meaning. Kanji constituents in personal names are likely to be far less meaningful than are kanji constituents in common nouns because the main function of the former is to represent sound. Moreover, overuse of a personal name would tend to make it less meaningful. Given that constituent kanji in personal names are less meaningful, the present study has found that kanji took significantly longer times to name than kana, the difference being comparable to the difference for the common noun set (Tables 2 and 5). These findings cannot be accounted for by the dual-route hypothesis. However, according to the selection difficulty hypothesis, it follows that kanji personal names are sometimes so difficult to segment into constituent kanji that more time is taken in selecting the right constituent kanji in a name. Indeed some confusion errors which support this hypothesis were observed in the kanji naming condition. For example, M.U. made insertion errors (e.g., “. . . % % f . . .” for “. . . % &‘. . .“) and transposition errors (e.g., “. . .3! I.. .” for “. . . $” % . . .“), which can be attributed to the difficulty involved in segmenting her first name % @ f%. Such confusion errors were absent in the kana condition. Explanatory Power of the Selection Difsiculty Hypothesis in Aphasic Cases The selection difficulty hypothesis can contribute to research on neurolinguistic phenomena such as deep and surface dyslexia in Japanese. (See Paradis, Hagiwara, and Hildebrandt, 1985, for a comprehensive review of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research on kanji and kana.) Two cases deserve mention here. One is that of a 50-year-old man with a right-sided homonymous heminopia reported by Sakamoto (1940, quoted by
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Sasanuma, 1980). It was shown that kanji compound words tended to be easier for him to name than single-character words, e.g., he was able to read s g lI8 (/jou-ba-tai/ meaning “cavalry”) but was unable to read each component ff , I, and !# when presented individually. Such difficulty appears to arise from two interacting sources: lesser familiarity with kanji bound morphemes than with two- or three-kanji words and the selection difficulty involving two- and threekanji words. Another case was reported by Sasanuma (1983, in which the oral reading performance of a subject S.U. is described. S.U. was 46 years old and had a 27month history of aphasia due to CVA, followed by an operation to remove a hematoma in the subcortical region of the left temporal lobe. According to Sasanuma, his kanji performance on concrete nouns (55% correct) was far better than the performance on abstract nouns (15% correct), adjectives (20% correct), and verbs (15% correct). However, the errors reported appear to suggest that one-character kanji words are more difficult for him than are two-character kanji words, but not that abstract nouns, adjective, and verbs are more difficult than concrete nouns. For example, the following oral reading errors were committed by S.U.: a concrete noun, P9 (/man/ meaning “gate”) + /iriguchi/ ( I\ Cl meaning “entrance”); an abstract noun, fl + /jinja/ ( @ ti meaning “shrine”); an adjective, #I c’ (Asuyo-i/ meaning “strong”) + /kata-i/ ( E&lE’ meaning “hard”); a verb, M s (/to-bu/ meaning “to fly”) + /hikoki/ ( # fi 8 meaning “airplane”). The error of the kanji adjective seems to have been produced through a four-step process, vis., through visual analysis the stimulus item ti c’ activated a more familiar two-character kanji word, $lk [81 (/kyoko/ meaning “solidity”), a more familiar constituent l&l was then incorrectly selected, and finally the constituent 141was attached another (correct) reading /kata-/. It seems that these errors are not unique to deep and surface dyslexics but that they appear even among normal children learning kanji words. The same mechanisms involving selection difficulty in the kanji system may be responsible for these kanji errors. REFERENCES Besner, D., & Hildebrandt, N. 1987. orthographic and phonological codes in the oral reading of Japanese kana. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13, 335-343. Clark, H. H., & Clark, E. V. 1977. Psychology and language. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Carroll, J. B., & White, M. 1973. Age-of-acquisition norms for 220 picturable nouns. Journal of Verbal Behavior and Verbal Learning, 12,563-576. Feldman, L. B., L Turvey, M. T. 1980. Words written in kana are named faster than the same words written in kanji. Language and Speech, 23,141-147. Goryo, K. 1987. [On reading]. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai. Hayashi, 0. 1982. [Japanese in diagrams]. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten. Nomura, Y. 1981. [The information processing of kanji, kana script: The effects of data-driven and conceptually-driven processing on reading]. Japanese Journal of Psychology, 51,327-334. Paradis, M., Hagiwara, H., & Hildebrandt, N. 1985. Neurolinguistic aspects of the Japanese written system. Tokyo: Academic Press Japan.
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Sasanuma, S. 1980. Acquired dyslexia in Japanese: Clinical features and underlying mechanisms. In M. Coltheart, K. Patterson, & .I. C. Marshall (Eds.), Deep dyslexia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pp. 48-90. Sasanuma, S. 1985. Surface dyslexia and dysgraphia: How are they manifested in Japanese? In K. E. Patterson, J. C. Marshall, & M. Coltheart (Eds.), Surface dyslexia. London: Erlbaum. Pp. 225-249. Steinberg, D. D., & Yamada, J. 1978. Are whole word kanji easier to learn than syllable kana? Reading Research Quarterly, 14,88-99. Underwood, B. J., & Schulz, R. W. 1960. Meaningfulness and verbal learning. Philadelphia: Lippincott. Yamada, J. 1988. Asymmetries of reading and spelling in Japanese children. Paper presented at the Script & Literacy Conference, McLuhau Program, University of Toronto, Toronto. June 4. Yamada, J., Imai, H., & Ikebe, Y. 1990. The use of the orthographic lexicon in reading kana words. Journal of General Psychology, 117,31 l-323.
